Tuesday 31 March 2015

March DESIGN

So it's the last day of March, and again I'm almost late for my own SAL - however, I just barely made it! As I'm pretty consistent working on my two main project - Dark Force by Tilton Crafts and Cut Thru' Cottage by Bothy Thready - and I already wrote about both of those designers, I was at a bit of a loss who to write about this month. I even thought about putting a few stitches into one of my older WIPs just to make it count and write about that, but then I got thinking some more...who's the designer who designed most of the projects I'm working at this year, and even almost all of my finishes so far? And thus, the idea for this post was born.

What project are you talking about this month?

My designer of the month is my dear friend Magical, and the project I'm focusing on is the March fob, the first entry in her new series of monthly scissor fobs. Now, I've only known Magical for about a year, but I know she's been designing quilting and cross stitch patterns for a while before she stopped for personal reasons - you can find some of her older patterns on her deviantArt page - and since the start of this year she's back with a monthly series of free ornaments she's been offering on our NCCIH homepage. In March, she also started a 'Fob of the month' series via her blog, and I have to say, so far I've loved everything she's done! For the fob, as you can see I've stitched both sides, but I have yet to cut them out and put them together. As the piece of fabric I'm using is just big enough for two more sides, I think I will wait for the April fob, stitch that up as well and then finish-finish both together.

Have you stitched a project by this designer before?

Yes, the three ornaments of the month that have been released so far:





Would you buy/stitch a design by this designer again? Why/Why not?

I would, and I will! I'm planning to keep up with both the ornament and the fob SAL and I might try myself at some of her older patterns as well.

What made you choose this particular design/designer?

I adore Magical's work, and I had seen how incredibly creative she can be with her own projects - sometimes she puts a lot of planning into them, sometimes she seems to just wing it, but the result is always breathtaking! So when she said she was starting a SAL, and then another, naturally, my interest was peaked, and when I saw the patterns, it was set that I should have to stitch all of them. Also, I can really use a scissor fob, I keep losing the damn things! :D

Did you notice anything that distinguished this designer from others?

Magical's patterns, at least the ones I've used so far, include a lot of freedome. She encourages people to choose their own colors (as I did with the fob - I just took my box of random threads and used whatever seemed fitting, including to different handdyed colors by Joydri Design) or their own way of finishing it (I'm thinking to finish the ornaments as an x-sided biscornu). So while following the pattern, you still get involved in the creative process, which is pretty awesome! She also stitches all of her patterns up herself, so you always get an idea and inspiration of how it might look like when done.

Monday 30 March 2015

HAP SAL sign in and a winner!

The end of March is already upon us (seriously, where have you GONE?!), and I still need to report for two of my SALs - one of them today, together with my weekly progress and the winner of last week's giveaway, and the other tomorrow, hopefully.

So today, I'm signing in for the HAP SAL by Stacey over at Crossed Stitches. I'm participating with my Dark Force project, and I kept up pace this month - one more column last week leaves me only one column short from another page finish!


The other piece I worked on this weekend was the Mystery Band sampler SAL, also hosted by Stacy. Somehow I managed to fall behind yet again, and had four bands to catch up on, but alas, I only managed four since I then realized I'm missing one of the colors. It should be included in my next shipping of the monthly thread club however, so I won't worry and just wait patiently for a while longer. In the top left corner, you can see my very first needle minder, the dragon Carla sent me, majesticaly reviewing my work!


Then of course, I need to announce the winner of my birthday giveaway last week - I put everyone's names in a randomizer and up first came...D1-D2! Congratulations! Please come forward by dropping me an email at LeonoreWintererATgmailDOTcom so we can discuss what you want :)

Now in other news, there was some watching that happend of course, more Supernatural (S4, E21+22 and S5, E1-5) and Big Bang Theory (S6, E21-24 and S7, E1-6). We also saw the Matrix, another part of Felix attempts to educate me in movies. I liked it, and I know I just gained a whole bunch of new references to get hehe.

I also did some reading and finished Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, a book a friend had given me to read. I really liked it, it started out a bit slow but became great and exciting after the first hundred pages or so. It's set in a world where humans and dragons have learned to live piecefully together - dragons can even assume a human form and live among them, but there are still a lot of prejudices and mutual dislike going on. And, who would have guessed, our heroine Seraphina is half dragon, half human, a fact she is very keen to hide, while working as a musician at the royal court. There's a sequel now, and I hope said friend will give it to me as well once she's finished :D

Friday 27 March 2015

March SFS and stitchy presents

March - Spent: 5.95€ - Earned: 4€

I did pretty good this month, but honestly, it wasn't on purpose - I ordered a pattern in the beginning of March, and was planning to get supplies for that later, but after almost three weeks they haven't even sent me a paypal invoice, yet alone sent anything. So since I can't be sure if this purchase will work out, I won't be counting it yet, and naturally I haven't bought the supplies yet either. So the only thing I really did buy was a small pattern from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery called Leaning Tower of Macarons - it's an old pattern they are going to discontinue, and just to cute for me to pass. They are discontinuing quite a few patterns, tomorrow, in fact, so you should take a look at them now.

In terms of earning, I finished another one of Magical's Ornaments of the month, worth 4€ at 35x35 stitches. So if my calculations are correct, I have now 63.9€ to spent.


But just because I didn't spent doesn't mean I don't have any pretties to show! In fact, there's quite a bit, starting with my monthly thread shippment. I almost got one full box now - I have two more, but I think I will need another two to store everything. This month, it came with a few bobbins (sadly of the paper kind and I don't like using those) and a blue-creme hand dyed thread called 'Moscow'.


Then, my dear friend Carla (if you've been lookin for her, her blog has moved, so click her name to find her again) set another example for her amazing generousity and sent everyone in our little hangout-group of stitchers a mysterious squishy envelope filled with all kind of goodies from her recent destashing experience. Everyone got a few patterns (for my, some lovely Sue Coleman otters and a beautiful life tree), a bazillon little bead bags (sooo many pretty colors) and a dragon needle minder (DRAGON!), and I already got a bit of floss she knows I need for a project I have planned. So THANK you amazing generous Carla, godess of the berserker stitchers, for this most awesome squishy there has ever been!


Anf last but not least, I got a late stitchy birthday present from my grandparents - it's Glendon Place's A-Maze-Ing Dessert, Red Velvet Cake, together with a threadpack of awesome handdyed silks. As you can see, this is what the Jacobean sampler linen I got earlier this year was meant for, and I think it fits really well with the floss. All I need to get know are the beads, but I won't need them for a while, so no rush there. I'm totally in love with this, the patter is even more beautiful than the preview picture online was, and the silks are so pretty and so SOFT, I'm almost scared to start using them! I don't know when I'm starting this, I know I should finish some stuff first, but we'll see if I'll already hold on that long :)


So that's it for now, regular post will be up sometime this weekend I guess. 

Tuesday 24 March 2015

March IHSW & TUSAL

As promised, here's another catch up post to get on top of things again. So last weekend was IHSW, but due to birthday, suprise dinner with Felix, my dad visiting and baking cakes I didn't get much actual stitching or hermitting done. However, I was quite productive last week as a whole, so I still have a few things to share! For one, I finished the next column of DF, which brings it to this point:


I also managed to finish the next paage of Cut Thru' Cottage, and as usual I will give you the fun of seeing it with and without the backstitching. This is page 4; another half page - page 5 will be almost full coverage.


Most importantly, I also finished my first Baby Suprise Jacket, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out! Her it is, already washed, dryed (it was important for me to choose a yarn that's both maschine washable and tumble dryer safe, this might need washing often after all) and all finished! The proud dad found it on his desk on monday, but he still doesn't know who the mysterous knitting elf was ^.~ The next jacket isn't due until June, so I can focus on a few other projects first.


Last but not least, here's my TUSAL jar for March: as usual, there's mostly dark blues and greys from DF, and then a few odds and ends from everything else I worked on.


Now to the 'everything else' part of the post - watching happend, of course:
  • Paul Blar - Mall Cop - This is was Felix offered me when I asked (what rarely happens) for a romantic comedy. And it wasn't even good, even he had to admit that...that guy acted just a bit *too* stupid for my taste.
  • Pulp Fiction - Another part of my education in important movies I somehow missed. I did like this one, not sure I 'got' it, but I liked it. Plus I 'get' a whole lot of pop culture references now that I missed before :D
  • Big Bang Theory S6, E4-20 - Nothing to add, I love this show :D
  • Supernatural S4, E 4-20 - This one is definately picking up momentum, I like it. Almost at the season finale too, so I try to prepare myself for another shocking revelation.
  • Stark Trek The Original Series, S1 E4 - I like watching a bit of this here and there, but the plot is oddly smiliar in each episode...
  • Haven S4, E11-13 - Caught up an what's avaiable again. This season sure was different than the first three, but in a good way. Less 'single' episodes, more continuous story arcs. I'm really curious for what will come in the next season.
  • Dr Who S2, E5 - It's on amazon prime again, now I just need to find the time to actually watch it ^_^
  • Stardust - One of my favourite movies, so we rewatched it on my birthday. Coincidently (not) I also got the book from my best friend, so I'll be able to compare soon!
I also got some gaming 'done' and finished the super awesome Vita-Game Danganronpa. It's a Visual Novel with some exploration parts and so called 'class trials' - 15 highschool students get imprisoned in there school by an evil mastermind who tells them they can leave if and only of the kill one of their classmates and get away with it. When a murder occurs, the students try to find the killer, who then gets executed, because if they don't, everyone else is executed. Sounds crazy and scary? It kinda is, but I haven't seen a game with such brilliant story twists and atmosphere before, and I'm really looking forward to playing the sequel ^_^


Monday 23 March 2015

Happy birthday giveaway!

Sooo...this weekend was IHSW, but it was also my birthday, and my dad was here to visit and I made cake and ate cake and got presents, and while I do have some stitchy stuff to report, that post will have to wait a bit longer. I didn't get any stitchy stuff for my birthday yet - yet, as I know that two lovely, stash filled envelopes are on their way to me and I have only slow postal services to blame for the delay. I did get a wonderfully  cuddly sloth whom I named Simon. Simon sleeps in my bed now, say hello to Simon!


But my birthday - awesome enough on it's own, isn't it? I do love birthdays - isn't the only thing to celebrate. A while back this blog hit 10.000 pageviews, and this here marks my 100ths post. That makes an average of 100 views per post, which is totally awesome! So for you, my awesome readers, I want to give something back. Now I don't have a lot of stash yet, or at least I'm not ready to get rid of anything yet, and most of you live overseas from me anyway, but I have a solution to all of that:

Between everyone who leaves a comment on this post, I will raffle a RAK/gift certificate from a designer/shop of your choice for a maximum value of 25€/$25/£15 (bad exchange rate, sorry my british friends!). Only conditions are the shop must be crafts related, support gift certificates/RAKing (I won't just email a chart to you or place an order in your name) and I need to be able to pay using paypal. The drawing will be held on sunday, so every comment until then is in!

So that's that - new regular post will be up tomorrow, or possibly later. Making plans never works out for me these days :D

Tuesday 17 March 2015

March Gifted Gorgeousness

Just a few days late, here's my March post for Gifted Gorgeousness, the stitch along that's all about gifted and gift projects. But before I launch right into my progress shots, let me just tell you how very thankful I am for everyone who reads and/or comments on my blog. Sometime last weekend I reached 10.000 page views, and that number means a lot to me! Coindicently, the next post will also by #100, so I'll have to think of something special for that.

Okay, on to business! Like always, most of my projects fit the discription (some of the supplies were gifted to me, or the finished project is intended to be a gift) - even my current main project, Dark Force, since I won the pattern in a stitching contest, and I was told that would count as well. So let's start with my progress here, I finished another column, of course, and even a bit of overlap to the next one - and, exciting exciting, that shiny thing in the lower right is the first bit of Vader's helmet!


Then I started and finished two gifts for my grandma this month; to lovely little guinea pig kits by RTO: Smart Gosh and Rodent Bonn.


I also started the Things Unseen Mystery Sampler by Lizzie*Kate - the whole kit was a christmas gift from my boyfriend, and I'm totally in love with it. I'll try to only stitch small patches though, so it will last a while longer. AND I started the next page of Bothy Thread's Cut Thru' Cottage, which is supposed to be a house warming gift for Felix' sister and her boyfriend when it's done.



I also did some knitting on BSJ, which is also going to be a gift, and it's technically finished  I'm just too lazy to finish-finish it, but I hope to have a finished picture by the weekend.

So that's it for stitching news, and everything else will have to wait for a later point, I'm still not feeling really well again and trying not to be away from the couch for too long in the evenings...or maybe I'm just lazy ;) Anyway, catch you later!


Saturday 14 March 2015

March ToT

A few days late for signing in, just as usual, but at least I did work on a few tiny projects this month!

Of course there was Magical's Ornament of the Month for March, in beautiful shades of Aquamarine blue, that I just finished a few days ago (I'm not quite sure if it was finished before the 11th, might have been a day after, but I honestly don't care, I'll just post it anyways ^.~)


I also stitched two little guinea pig kits by RTO for my grandma's birthday today. Both where about 40x40 stitches. With 'Smart Gosh' and 'Rodent Bonn' I now finished all four guinea pigs of the series.


That brings my total tiny-count for the year to five, that's not too bad while working on all my bigger projects as well I guess :)

Friday 13 March 2015

March WIPocalypse - Catching up...

It seems like no matter how hard I try, I always end up far behind on my SAL sign ins and stuff...and now I haven't posted at all in almost two weeks! We had company over the one weekend, then I had a three day business trip, some work in the apartment the following weekend and I've been sick most fo this week (also I only stayed home yesterday and today and I'm feeling much better already, only a bit weak still), and on top of that I could hardly find the time, yet alone the motivation, to get posting - sorry, everyone!
No in order to not fracture my motivation further with 'over posting', I'll probably be doing a few posts back-to-back over the following days, starting with WIPocalypse. I'll decide on the fly when to leave something out in one post and include it in another one, but in a few days everything and everyone should be up to date again *crosses fingers*.

Let's start with the monthly question for WIPocalypse: If money – and time – were not limiters, what projects would be on your stitching bucket list?

That's a tricky question - it makes me think about all the things I want to stitch and can't actually because of the limiters mentioned above, which is bound to make me frustrated, so I won't get into it too much. If money wasn't an issue, I would probably start a Chatelaine mandala right away - I plan to do so, but I'm a bit intimidated by the speciality stitches and everything, so I'll practice a bit more as to not waste any of the precious material in those mandalas. One thing that might be a bit of a life time project but that I actually atempt to accomplish is stitching all of the Thomas Kinkade Disney Dreams kits.

Now for the actual stitching: For my trip, I took to small project's with me: One being Rodent Bonn, the last of the RTO Guinea Pigs, which I finished all in one day (mostly during the eight hour train ride). he's really cute, but a little more red than on the cover picture. I also revived my Game of Thrones bookmarks and stitched a bit on Arryn; filled in a few lines of both white and blue so that's one piece save from becoming an UFO. On the downside, I had to pull out a bit of the Tully bookmark I had already finished - I ran out of the red just ~20 stitches before being done and used another skein to fill in, but the dye lots didn't match, and only now did I notice by how much. I think I have yet another skein somewhere, I'll check to see if that one fits better.




Of course I also worked on DF and finished my obligatory next column. And then I couldn't resist any longer and started the Lizzie*Kate design Felix got me for christmas; the Things Unseen Mystery Sampler (although technically it's no longer a secret since all parts have been released now). And I do love it so much - I love all my projects of course, but stitching on hand dyed linen with overdyed threads is somethings else, and the design itself is so awesome as well! It's my first time stitching something even remotly sampler like, but I think I might be ready for more of the sort. This one, I will safe and enjoy and only stitch in small bits, so I'll pack it away for now.


I actually worked on a few more things as well, but I will save those for future posts so you all still have a reason to come back and read them, and launch right into what-else-did-Leonore-do instead:

I did finish a proper game for once (and by proper, I mean RPG :D): Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God is a roguelike Dungeoncrawler in which you assume the role of Pupuru, a student at the mage academy who aspires t create the ultimate curry dish and sets of to fins the ultimate ingredients. Sounds a bit crazy, and, in fact, it is - not just the plot, but most of the characters at well, it very much a cliche japanese game, and also has quite some grinding in the end, but I really enjoyed it and am proud to have finished a rpg again for once :)

As for watching, oh boy, quite a lot has happend, remember, it's been almost two weeks:
  • More Big Bang Theory, we finished S5 (E6-24) and started S6 (E1-3).
  • More Supernatural: Finished S2 (E8-16, a short season) and started S4 (E1-3)...feels like things are starting to get reeeeally serious now
  • Haven S4, E5-10 - had to make use of the fact that I was alone with the TV those two sicks days :D
  • Top Gun - another one of those 'classics' I had never seen. The movie was decent, but I don't care much for Tom Cruise, somehow even less for the young one
  • Patch Adams - I do love Robin Williams and the movie was great at parts, but others seemed strange and didn't really 'fit' - did a bit of reading afterwards and learned that the real Patch Adams wasn't too pleased with the movie, and I'm not suprised, sadly.
  • Dirty Dancing - Yet another classic, and Felix insisted that I need to watch this one because he adores it - maybe a bit strange for a guy, but I agree, it's a great movie, and I so envy them for being able to pull of that dance routine, I'd fall miserably and break some bones three steps in
  • After Earth - I kind of liked the trailer to that one so we watched when it showed up on amazon prime. Do not recommend though, it was strange ans akward and illogical at best...also, Jaden Smith, why are you trying to be an actor?
  • Beasts of the Southern Wild - This one was recommended to as as being totally awesome, but while Hushpuppy surely was cute and the scenery amazing, sadly it's also one of those movies that leave me asking 'What exactly are you trying to tell me?'
  • Despicable Me 2 - Nothing to critize on that one, it might be one of the best animated sequels I've seen so far - funny and charming and d'awwing, and also, minions! :D
So that's it for now, stay tuned for more posts coming up either tomorrow or sunday or most possibly both...